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RIESBECK’s TRAVELS THROUGH GERMANY. 185
richer clafs amongft the poorer, and by this means reftores the balance as much as it is
poflible to do it. Once grant that the real ftrength of a people confifts in frugality, in-
duftry, and an equal divifion of property, and you muft be content to put yourfelf above
the trifling inconveniences, which a {mall part of the whole muft unavoidably be expofed
to, from an attention to thefe maxims.
Is ‘there any country that has wafted its ftrength on merchandize, that has been able
to fupport itfelf long? The immenfe quantity of riches, the inevitable confequences of
the freedom of trade, have always drawn along with them luxury, extravagance, effemi-
nacy, tyranny, and the confequent ruin of the country. Mr. Wraxall himfelf, who has
echoed the outcry of the merchant on the Pruffian fyftem of finance, but who might
have convinced himfelf, in the houfes of the Pruflian farmers, that the King’s fubjects
are not at all in arms againft him, as he fays they are; Mr. Wraxall himfelf is the
warmett declaimer again{t the pride and tyranny which great riches have introduced in
England; but let him fhew me another dam to thefe ravages, befides that which has
been oppofed to them by the King of Pruffia.
It is a ftrange perverting of political reafoning, when one hears the fame man cry in
England, that the great wealth of the nobility hath undermined the wealth of the ftate,
and finds him in Pruffia joining the Pruffian nobility in faying, that the profperity of the
farmers is hurtful to the interefts of Pruffia. Hiftory can fhew no example of the prof-
perity of the farmers having excited convulfions in a ftate; whereas it abounds in in-
{tances of {tates overturned by the power of the nobles and the freedom of trade. The
farmer feldom has too much; but if he does happen to be rich, his income is more
equally divided than that of the inhabitants of the city ; he has befides more children to
provide for out of it; befides this, as the farmer’s fubftance is procured by hard labour,
he is more frugal in the management of it, and on that account likewife lefs. hurtful to
the ftate.
The Pruffian fyftem of excife does not in the leaft affect the real profperity of the
fubject ; it affets only the confumption and the diforderly foreign trade. The only
object of it is to make the fubjeéts frugal; and frugality is the mother of induftry.
There is no fcience in which fo much fophiftry has been ufed as in that of ftate ceco-
nomy.. It is generally thought that trade alone will make a country rich, whereas no-
thing is fo falfe. Cadiz, Naples, Lifbon, Smyrna, Aleppo, and many other flourifhing
trading towns I could mention, flourifh at the expence of the countries to which they
belong. When they cry out in Pruflia, that trade has fallen off, it only means that the
confumption has decreafed ; no doubt it is a falling off to the dealers in coffee, that
they cannot fell as much coffee as they were ufed to do; but thefe people, who are the
perfons that have raifed the outcry againft the King, ought to confider, that a country
of Jews (I fpeak of modern Jews) is the moft wretched of all countries, and that a
governor is in the right to concern himfelf very little about what may be for their
advantage.
If foreign trade has decreafed in the Pruflian dominions, on the other hand induttry
has increafed. ‘There is a vifible proof of this in the aftonifhing increafe of towns and
of population. No country in Europe of the fame fize has doubled its population, as
the Pruffian dominions have done (in thefe I do not comprife the conquered countries)
within the {pace of fifty years. This fingle fact contradicts all the outcry about Pruffian
defpotifm. Effects muft always correfpond with their caufes, and no adminiftration
hoitile to humanity, could produce fuch an altonifhing increafe of men.
Even the monopolies make part of the King’s fyftem of univerfal benevolence. _ I fhall
not enter into an exact difquilition of every fingle article, but only confider that which
VOL. VI. BB raifes
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